Listing all the things wrong with actor Kevin Spacey's recent statement announcing he is gay is too much to ask of a single column. On Sunday, responding to accusations that he had made a sexual advance towards a 14-year-old boy 31 years ago, Spacey said he did not remember the encounter, suggested he may have been drunk, and apologized, adding that now he chooses to live his life "as a gay man."

It was a stunning statement in its obtuseness. In a few words, Spacey was able to reinforce the most negative stereotype about gay men — that they are pedophiles who prey on children. It's as if he was doing public relations for the Westboro Baptist Church.

Spacey used the announcement of his sexual identity to draw attention away from the accusation of sexual assault. He assumed liberals in the media would dedicate more pixels to that shiny diversion than the charge he was facing. Just weeks ago, disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein tried the same gambit by vowing to fight the National Rifle Association in a statement in which he essentially acknowledged sexually harassing women. Basically, Weinstein's argument was, "Hey guys, I'm liberal, so maybe let this slide?"

These recent escape strategies hatched by Hollywood's most powerful names answer an important question for those on the left: Just how stupid do the party's "elites" think rank-and-file Democrats are?

In the wake of the Republican Party's crackup, much has been written about the battle between the GOP's philosophically conservative eggheads and its Trump-inspired populist wing. But Democrats face similar battles within progressivism — namely, wealthy elites who view the rubes in flyover country as valuable only to the extent that they serve the interests of the party's politically connected.

It is this disconnection that likely caused Hillary Clinton, the patron saint of progressive elitism, to unexpectedly lose blue-collar states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. While Trump made outlandish promises to turn low-income workers' lives around, Clinton deftly floated above the rust belt, deeming many of its inhabitants "deplorables." Had she shown more interest in the working class, Clinton might not have lost white voters without college degrees by a whopping 39 percentage points.

The party's coastal elites sneer at hardworking Democrats in the heart of the country. Hollywood mocks their traditional cultural views while pretending the entertainment industry isn't a snake pit of degradation. Americans are now learning that the actions of Weinstein, Spacey and other notable men have been an "open secret" in Hollywood for years. We should all look forward to the year 2030, when we learn what the "open secrets" were way back in 2017.

The split between working-class and coastal Democrats is longstanding. In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to explain rival Hillary Clinton's support in rural Pennsylvania by asserting that "bitter" rural voters "cling to guns or religion." Keep in mind, Obama wasn't talking about right-wingers; he was referring to non-urban Democrats he thought favored his opponent.

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, who twice lost as a Democrat running for president, that the "thinking people" supported him, he is reported to have answered, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." For Democrats to succeed nationally, they need to wrest the voters they once appealed to away from Donald Trump, and that means respecting their intelligence and opinions when they're not also asking them to buy tickets to a movie.